Tower Dominion Review
TOWER DOMINION REVIEW IN PROGRESS
I can probably count on one hand how many tower defence games I have played in my lifetime. It’s not a genre that can typically capture and hold my attention, but Tower Dominion looked to be more than the typical genre offering with by blending tower defence with rogue-lite and RTS elements. Tower Dominion checks all the necessary boxes it needs to: it’s simple to understand, offers plenty of depth, it’s fun, re-playable, and addictive, but most importantly, it feels unique.
WHAT IS TOWER DOMINION and why is it good?
Tower Dominion is a tower defence game as you likely deduced, but it also mixes in rogue-like elements with a plethora of unlocks and RTS. One of the most unique feature about Tower Dominion is that you build and control that path that the enemies must take, known as the expansion phase. This gameplay element not only includes the direction of the tiles, which is especially important for flying units, but also the elevation changes, which affects the strength and efficacy of your structures. Both of these factors play an integral role in battle and can be the difference between success and failure.
Tower Dominion features three distinct classes that constantly reminded me of StarCraft. The Iron Dragons are your most traditional military focusing on raw firepower, which align with the Terran. The Pargan Assault Group or PAG embrace advanced technology and a more tactical approach, which feel like a close parallel to the Protoss. The missing link is the Lions of Ravelsky, a class that is akin to the Zerg no matter how much I would have wanted them to be. However, they do feature genetically modified super soldiers, which is a pretty good alternative.
Each faction has a variety of leaders, ten to be exact, that have very different abilities, which not only make each run feel unique, but you should easily be able to find a leader to suit your play style. Each Faction also has a different biome that they fight in and while it doesn’t affect gameplay whether you are playing in the snow, the desert or the forest, it does offer a nice visual change.
As for the gameplay itself, there are five difficulty levels and on the base level, there are 25 enemy waves. You being with a base, and a little bit of resources for spending to get yourself started. You will receive resources for killing enemies and at the end of each wave you will be offered an upgrade package to choose from. There are three possible items to find: resources, blueprints, which will allow you to build that structure provided you have enough resources to afford it and doctrines, which are upgrades to existing equipment. Each package will contain two items, which could be any combination of those items. It could be two blueprints or one blueprint and some resources etc.
After each run, you will more than likely unlock a handful of items with a Pavlovian style bell and with the rogue-like style, you will unlock permanent commanders to use or unlock new upgrade tiers on equipment from using it.
Tower Dominion is a very addictive game with a lot of strategic depth. In addition to the variety provided from the three different classes, thirty leaders, and end of wave offers, there is also a staggering amount of depth within each unit placed on the battlefield. Each unit or structure has three different levels of upgrades within that can drastically change how that unit or structure operates. Then there are the elevation levels that play an integral role in battle. The higher up a structure is the more effective it is and there are items that can raise the building height as well.
WHATS NOT GOOD ABOUT TOWER DOMINION?
The story in Tower Dominion is paper thin, it’s Steam Deck verified, but the controls doesn’t feel natural or intuitive in handheld and there are a few gameplay choices I wish were different. The first one is that when you have a lot of blueprints, they can become distracting at the bottom of the screen. I wish that they would all collapse into one folder titled blueprints, which could be opened at the clock of a button. It would make the visuals much less cluttered by the end of a busy round.
You can reroll land tiles during the expansion phase, but you cant reroll reward tiles after each round. Occasionally, the three choices didn’t have enough incentive and it would have been nice to either be able to reroll those rewards or just get a lump sum of resources for them instead.
As for the visuals, they are fairly simplistic, which is almost the going rate for the genre, but they have a certain charm and attention to detail. Most structures or units when upgraded, get a slight visual change to reflect that increase in power.
VERDICT
Tower Dominion isn’t the kind of game that you want to smash through to see the credits or find out what the story is, which is good, because it doesn’t really have one outside of defending the world from alien creatures. It’s the kind of game that you want to play to wind down after a long day as it somehow uses all of your brain, but doesn’t require deep thinking like other genres. Each run can average about 20-30 minutes, but the time melts away. Tower Dominion might lack in certain areas, but it executes what it needs to flawlessly with an engaging gameplay loop that always begs for one more run. If you have an addictive personality, stay away from Tower Dominion.
